Published 4:56 pm, Tuesday, April 29, 2014

AUSTIN — Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst's failed U.S. Senate campaign wants to skirt a portion of an unresolved tab owed to its chief pollster, prominent Republican number cruncher Mike Baselice, as part of a roughly $1 million debt Dewhurst has yet to pay vendors and consultants.

The Dewhurst For Texas federal campaign committee, in a new filing this month, told the Federal Election Commission that it does not “assume full liability” for the $50,452 still owed to polling firm Baselice & Associates.

“The applicable services were not performed in accordance with the requirements set forth by DFT,” Assistant Treasurer Curt Beck wrote in the filing.

Baselice, who was not notified by the Dewhurst camp of its intentions to dispute the debt prior to the FEC filing, challenged the claim. He said Dewhurst readily paid for around 10 polls during his race against then-Solicitor General Ted Cruz but has decided for some reason to make an issue of the $50,000 bill for work to complete two polls.

"They were given everything in accordance and in the same fashion as with the other surveys we conducted for them,” said Baselice, who also has been a pollster for Gov. Rick Perry and other Texas Republicans.

The Dewhurst campaign declined to comment, but some of the polls Baselice produced for Dewhurst in the Senate race did raise eyebrows.

For example: just days before the runoff election between Dewhurst, a Baselice internal poll showed Dewhurst ahead by 5 percentage points. Yet, Cruz went on to trounce Dewhurst by 14 percentage points.

The now-disputed pollster debt is just a slice of the larger chunk of cash that Dewhurst, currently vying for re-election as lieutenant governor, still owes to a mix of entities from his Senate run for services ranging from consultants to mailers to a $50,000 bonus for a fundraiser.

And it comes as Dewhurst's re-election campaign aggressively pounds state Sen. Dan Patrick, R-Houston, over bankruptcy debts he walked away from in the 1980s. Patrick has responded to the attacks, in part, by pointing a finger right back at the Dewhurst Senate debt.

According to the filing, Dewhurst's campaign did chip away at the overall debt in recent months, making a roughly $25,000 payment to Raconteur Media, which helped with website consulting and advertising, and a $54,078 payment to OnMessage Media, a consulting and polling firm. The Dewhurst campaign still owes Raconteur Media almost $20,000 and OnMessage Media about $116,500.

The campaign, according to the filing, also told the FEC it is not assuming any liability for about $474,000 the federal Dewhurst campaign committee owed to his state campaign committee because it has been settled — a sum separate from the almost $1 million Dewhurst still owes vendors.

That $474,000 is embroiled in the alleged money-funneling scheme involving Dewhurst's former campaign manager, Kenneth "Buddy" Barfield, who signed over his elegant West Austin home in November to repay a portion of the campaign funds that Dewhurst claims Barfield stole from the Senate campaign. The house, which was listed at an asking price of $2.8 million, is still on the market.

Dewhurst, a multi-millionaire who loaned his re-election campaign $2 million dollars in February, has fallen back on the Barfield debacle to explain why vendors and consultants are still owed money.

On Tuesday, Dewhurst political director Chris Bryan rehashed a statement the campaign has already provided to other media on the issue:

“The state and federal committees have acquired title to Barfield's house as part of efforts to recover monies he stole from the committees. Efforts will continue to sell the house to obtain funds to repay monies stolen by Barfield from the committees.”